By admin 
Ron Bain is CFO of Vaalco Power, a Houston-based upstream oil and gasoline firm with a robust presence in Africa and Canada. Based in 1985, Vaalco is dual-listed on the New York and London inventory exchanges.
World Finance: You have got been CFO for nearly 4 years. How has Vaalco’s aggressive place modified throughout your tenure?
Ron Bain: It’s been an energetic interval throughout which we have now delivered a number of transformative transactions that elevated scale and diversified the asset portfolio. We accomplished a value-accretive company merger with Transglobe in 2022 that noticed us purchase working property in Egypt and Canada. Extra not too long ago, we acquired a non-operating curiosity in a producing subject in Cote d’Ivoire by means of the acquisition of Svenska AB.
“As well as, we proceed to drive natural development throughout the portfolio with drilling campaigns, whereas increasing our footprint by including new licenses that present long-term upside potential. All of this leaves Vaalco nicely positioned to consolidate its place as a number one impartial exploration and manufacturing firm.”
GF: What makes this enterprise and business a particular problem for a CFO?
Bain: It’s a really thrilling, fluid, and cyclical sector in which there’s plenty of deal-making, plenty of funding, and the requirement to deploy materials capital throughout the portfolio to ship development. The position of the CFO is to make sure entry to capital to help development aims in addition to work with the finance staff and government to mitigate threat: for instance, by means of implementation of hedging devices to guard the corporate in opposition to commodity draw back.
GF: What absorbs most of your power and time?
Bain: Most of my time is spent making certain we preserve a strong stability sheet that balances natural and inorganic development alongside our dedication to shareholder return. Vaalco is dual-listed in London and New York, so I additionally spend plenty of time partaking with our buyers and wider stakeholders, overseeing our regulatory commitments to these listings, and enjoying an enormous position within the growth of our technique and our ESG agenda.
GF: What makes for an ideal finance staff?
Bain: It’s vital to have good communication throughout the staff, so all people is aware of the aims and their respective roles in reaching these aims. I’m lucky to have an ideal finance staff throughout all our areas. I even have an in depth working relationship with our CEO, George Maxwell, having labored alongside him at our earlier firm, Eland Oil & Gasoline, which achieved a great exit for all stakeholders just a few years in the past.
GF: What’s the position of AI within the finance perform? How do you see it evolving at Vaalco?
Bain: AI is already in use in finance at Vaalco. We use AI-powered software program to deal with information entry in addition to bill processing with optical character recognition that extracts course of information from receipts and paperwork with minimal human intervention. We carried out a world ERP system in 2024 and are gathering large quantities of datasets by means of it. With the web of issues and the power to combine meter readings and monitoring gauges, we see machine studying fashions studying and studying from these giant datasets to enhance our decision-making.
GF: What retains you up at night time?
Bain: Financial and market uncertainty, along with an elevated administrative burden through better authorities regulation. My duty is, first, to make sure the corporate is performing for the advantage of all of our stakeholders. We’ve plenty of staff, so we should show that we’re good company residents and oversee a secure working surroundings.
We see ourselves as companions to the host governments within the nations the place we function, so we have now a duty to the folks of these nations to ship a constructive influence by means of our actions. As an operator of material-producing property, we should at all times show operational excellence and environmental stewardship.